CodeBLUE contest music

Last night I went dancing at CodeBLUE, the newest venue addition to the Chicago dance scene. The organizers had invited me and Jenna to judge the low-key strictly lindy contest that evening (they've been running a series of different contests at the dances), and we were happy to oblige. We've got some fairly developed opinions about contests and contest music--not just from a competitors point of view but also in terms of how contests affect an event. We tried our best to keep to our guns: choose music that will make the competitors look good, have somebody to count them in for spotlights, make the whole thing as short & snappy as possible.

Here's a run-down of the music and a play-by-play of the contest:

1. Look-a-There - Slim Gaillard - The Very Best Of - 2:18 - 180. After clearing a space and telling the competitors how the contest was going to work, we introduced all 8 couples and did a short all-skate warm-up. Then line back up and get ready for a spotlight round.
2. Moppin' & Boppin' - Fats Waller - 100 Swing & Big Band Classics - 4:27 - 170. The spotlights were a standard jam format, with each competitor getting eight 8-counts. Since there were 8 competitors, that meant the song had to be 4 choruses long to squeeze everyone in. I knew Moppin' & Boppin' was long enough, and had a good energy, but the drum solo introduction slipped my mind. It's ten 8-counts long (ugh!), so we just let it run before the first spotlight. Unfortunately that meant leaving Phil & Jame in the middle of the floor waiting to start--sorry you two!
3. Lindyhopper's Delight - Chick Webb - Strictly Jive - 2:45 - 195. We did another round of spotlights with this song. I picked this one because it's an old standby--probably all of the competitors have heard it a zillion times before, so they'd be very comfortable with it--but I bet many people in the audience were not very familiar with it.
4. Forty Days & Forty Nights - The Blue Vipers of Brooklyn - Forty Days & Forty Nights - 2:52 - 215. We had planned to just do a very short all-skate at the end, but on the spur of the moment, we decided to do make it a tap-out. All eight couples started dancing, then we tapped them out one at a time until there were only two couples left. The audience cheered for their favorites between these two, and then we tapped out one of them to leave a winner.

The top three couples were:

• 3rd - Phil & Jame
• 2nd - Blake & Kristine
• 1st - John & Kathryn

Congratulations to all eight couples who competed--you all looked great and pulled out some great dancing.

On the whole I think things went down pretty well, though the whole thing could have been slightly shorter, and there was the one hiccup with the music I picked. Start to finish, I think the contest took about 15 minutes. With a little more forethought/coordination, we might have been able to get it down to 10 or 12 minutes. I'm not sure how we could have made it shorter than that, since I wouldn't have wanted to shorten it to one spotlight a piece, and we didn't really have enough couples to do a prelim round. Hmmm....